The Future of Personal Information Management, Part 1. William Jones

II (Building Places of Our Own for Digital Information) will be available in the Summer of 2012, and will consist of the following chapters.

      • Chapter 5. Technologies to eliminate PIM? We have seen astonishing advances in the technologies of information management—in particular, to aid in the storing, structuring and searching of information. These technologies will certainly change the way we do PIM; will they eliminate the need for PIM altogether?

      • Chapter 6. GIM and the social fabric of PIM. We don’t (and shouldn’t) manage our information in isolation. Group information management (GIM)—especially the kind practiced more informally in households and smaller project teams—goes hand in glove with good PIM.

      • Chapter 7. PIM by design. Methodologies, principles, questions and considerations as we seek to understand PIM better and to build PIM into our tools, techniques and training.

      • Chapter 8. To each of us, our own. Just as we must each be a student of our own practice of PIM, we must also be a designer of this practice. This concluding chapter looks at tips, traps and tradeoffs as we work to build a practice of PIM and “places” of our own for personal information.

       KEYWORDS

      PIM, personal information management, information overload, HCI, human-computer interaction, cognitive science, keeping found things found

       This book is dedicated to Efthimis Efthimiadis whose smiling face I still expect to see as I go through the corridors of Mary Gates Hall. Efthi, your memory lives on.

       Contents

       Preface

       Acknowledgments

       1 A New Age of Information

       1.1 A definition of PIM

       1.2 Who benefits from better PIM and how?

       1.3 Related fields and relevant terms

       1.3.1 A useful interplay

       1.3.2 “PIMs” and PDAs

       1.3.3 Human/computer interaction, human-information interaction and library & information science

       1.3.4 Knowledge vs. information, knowledge management vs. information management, PKM vs. PIM

       1.3.5 Time, task and project management

       1.4 A short history of PIM

       1.5 A neolithic revolution in personal information management

       1.6 Roads and walls

       1.7 The plan for the remainder of the book

       2 The Basics of PIM

       2.1 Information as the object of PIM

       2.1.1 The information item and its form

       2.1.2 How is information personal?

       2.1.3 Defining a personal space of information

       2.1.4 Personal information collections

       2.2 The managing activities of PIM

       2.2.1 Defining a mapping

       2.2.2 Six activities of personal information management

       2.2.3 Putting more “meta” into a balanced practice of PIM

       2.3 Conclusion

       3 Our Information, Always at Hand

       3.1 Physical meets digital

       3.1.1 Accessorize! The watch watch and other wearable devices of input and output

       3.1.2 The challenges of privacy and security

       3.1.3 Lifelogging

       3.1.4 The uses of an i.e.log

       3.2 Constantly connected (and constantly on call)

       3.2.1 Multi-tasking “busyness”

       3.2.2 Really getting real things done

       3.3 Conclusion

       4 Our Information, Forever on the Web

       4.1 Read, write, … realize!

       4.1.1 A progression

       4.1.2 From the desktop to the web and back again

       4.1.3 Moving on out: from vertical high-rises to bands of horizontal integration

       4.1.4 The objects of our applications, Part I: Units and tools of construction

       4.1.5 Our houses on wheels

       4.2 Living with, through and on the Web

       4.2.1 Living with the Web

       4.2.2 Living through the Web

       4.2.3 Living on the Web

       4.2.4 The objects of our applications, Part II: Building our stories

       4.3 Conclusion

       Bibliography

       Author’s Biography

       Preface

      All of my work, going back to my doctoral research into human memory long ago at Carnegie-Mellon University, has been motivated by the observation that information—at the right place and time, in the right form, and coherently organized—can help us to be very smart. Conversely, information missing or messy can overwhelm and make us stupid. How can we use information and information tools as an extension of ourselves and according to the lives we want to live?

      Who should read this book? I wrote the book for the following audiences: